Used them twice and ordered 3 or 4 tons.
The first time was a few years ago and I had no problems. The driver moved the pallets into the garage using the hand truck and did a good job.
But last year we used them again, and I didn't have a good experience.
They were supposed to deliver when I wasn't home. We had a snowstorm earlier that week. Our driveway was shoveled and we had been parking our two cars on it, which we moved to the street on the day of the expected delivery. There was a little snow/ice in places of the driveway where there are little pockets.
When I came home and didn't see any pellets, I assumed they didn't come for some reason. I called and left a message asking when we could reschedule. I got a call back a few hours later from the owner. He said the driver couldn't deliver because the neighbors across from our driveway had parked in such a way that the driver couldn't get his truck in. Also the driver reported that our driveway was covered with ice and snow.
I told him we had shoveled our driveway and it was clear enough for us to park our two cars in, so I didn't know what the driver was talking about.
The owner said he'd check with him and get back to us.
About four or five days later, we still hadn't heard from him. My husband noticed the charge on the credit card and called to ask why we were charged for something we don't have. The owner and my husband got into a shouting match, and that was the end of that. They refunded the cost of the pellets but not our delivery fee, since they claimed it was our fault the driver couldn't deliver because our driveway was covered in snow and ice.
So here's the thing.
I can understand them wanting to charge us a delivery fee since they came all the way out here from Uxbridge.
But I'm giving them 2 stars for a couple of reasons.
1. A few days later, we got an email from them with a copy of their credit memo which had their version of what happened on it. It said things that weren't true, such as they had told us the driveway had to be cleared, they left a message that they couldn't deliver, we called them a week later to ask about it. None of these things were true. Funny thing is, they said we called on 2/27, which is hard to do without a time machine since we received that email on 2/25.
I know this is just their internal documentation so it doesn't really matter, but their fabricated details left me with a worse impression than I already had.
2. The claim that they couldn't deliver was totally lame. I know from past deliveries from other companies that it's only the hand trucks that have trouble going over even a small amount of snow. But for this order, we did not request a hand truck. All we wanted was for the pallets to be pushed into our garage, which is normally done with a forklift truck.
This year I ordered from Pellets R Us in Acton. We got two different deliveries from them. Both times the driver came in a flatbed truck with a piggyback forklift truck attached. He also couldn't get the big truck past the way our neighbors parked, so both times he pulled the flatbed over and got out the forklift. He drove each pallet from the flatbed truck to our house on the forklift truck.
Unlike a hand truck, the forklift truck has regular tires and has no problems driving over snow.
And, get this. We had snow two days ago, and they forgot to plow our street. For today's delivery, the Pellets R Us guy drove the forklift to our house through the slushy snow.
So the claim that Pellets Direct couldn't deliver because our driveway was full of snow is totally lame. The real reason they couldn't deliver is either because they didn't have a forklift, they didn't bring the forklift, or the driver just didn't feel like using it, and he couldn't maneuver his big truck around the parked cars.
I'm giving them two stars instead of one because they did refund the price of the undelivered pallets without a problem. read more